I think I’ve been won over by gluten-free baking. Me, lover of gluten, self-confessed gluten groupie! I never thought I’d see the day. Of course, it’s all thanks to chocolate.

And there’s nothing better for a chocoholic than brownies. Much like with chocolate chip cookies, everyone has their own idea of how the texture of brownies should be, either cakey and crumbly, dense and fudgy, or moist and chewy. I am personally a fan of the latter two, though I’ll never say no to a cakey brownie.

Let’s be real – as long as there’s chocolate in it, I’m not turning it down.

Lemons are an interesting fruit – on their own, they’re so sour they’re almost punishing to your tastebuds, but when you add sugar and put them in baked goods, they basically taste like sunshine. Rock on, lemons, you make everything better.

This is my favorite no-frills recipe for lemon curd. Just lemons, sugar, and eggs. And there’s no butter here, so it’s practically a health food!

I don’t mean to brag, but I’m pretty awesome at eating bread. That part of the brain that tells you when you’re full and to stop eating – it basically shuts down when there is baked dough in front of me and as a result, I have, on more than one occasion, eaten an entire loaf in one day, if not one sitting. It’s just, so good, whether plain or toasted, with Nutella or jam, or loaded with fixin’s for a sandwich.

You are my favorite thing, bread. My very favorite thing. Side note: if you haven’t seen Fringe, you are seriously missing out. Once you get past season 1, which was, admittedly, pretty rough, it’s one of the most incredible shows, with brilliant acting and superb storytelling and oh god, why do I do this to myself, I am crying again just watching that scene and I think I need to do some emotional eating, so thank god I have this loaf of bread here.

Ignoring the fact that I get way too emotionally invested in TV shows, there’s really nothing like a fresh loaf of challah bread. Soft and sturdy and eggy and delicious, it’s perfectly complemented by a nice layer of jam and even better when made into french toast. Just try not to eat it all in one sitting.

A confession: I’ve never decorated sugar cookies. Like, really, legitimately, beautifully decorated them. As a child, I took canned frosting, slathered it on a cookie baked from store-bought cookie dough, and then threw some sprinkles on them and called it a day. But since I started reading food blogs and once I really got into baking, I knew cookie decorating was definitely on my baking bucket list.

So with Valentine’s Day coming up, I figured this would be the perfect occasion to kill two birds with one stone – finally tackle decorating sugar cookies and also try out that brush embroidery technique everyone’s been going nuts over on Pinterest.

I’m happy to report that 2 days later, logging a total of 12 hours, I have succeeded!

(Note to self: you are notIron Man, you cannot run before you walk, and in fact should probably crawl first, or even just sit on your ass and think about the idea of movement before even attempting it, so the next time you try some newfangled baking thing, try to plan our your time a little better so you’re not up until 2 a.m. decorating cookies. Thank you for your cooperation. Sincerely, yourself.)

There’s nothing quite like standing over a cutting board for 6 hours straight, meticulously piping and decorating around 150 cookies.

For this week’s Muffin Monday, I decided to go with something festive since it’s Mardi Gras on Tuesday, so naturally, King Cake! Now, the last time I had a King Cake was in middle school French class, so my memory of them has more or less disintegrated. According to the internet, they’re basically a giant cinnamon roll sometimes also filled with fruit and cream cheese and then covered in a simple glaze and colored sugar. I remember them being good, but pretty dense and heavy, and I knew that’s not how I wanted this muffin version to be.

I decided to go with a basic muffin batter lightly spiced with cinnamon and then filled with both cream cheese and sauteed apples. Then I topped them off with a simple glaze and yellow, purple, and green sanding sugar.

The end result has all the festiveness and deliciousness of a King Cake but is lighter and won’t weigh you down the way a typical King Cake does. Give up anything else for Lent, just not these muffins.

These are really, really pushing the boundaries of what we call “muffins”, but who really cares about semantics anyways?